Lightning Bender in the Brig
by The Eleventh Doctor
Summary: The crew of the Enterprise discovers that they have the ability to control elements after returning to the Enterprise from away missions to the Four Nations Planet. The terrorist who has been thrown in the brig finds out that he can bend lightning. Bending mayhem ensues as he makes destroying the ship and its crew his goal.A Star Trek and Avatar the Last Airbender story.
1. Lightning Bender in the Brig

**_PART I_**

The terrorist Corvus Petrescu looked up at the force field that separated him from the rest of the brig.

The captain and his bridge crew had taken about half a dozen away missions to the planet below. If he wasn't disguised and on the away mission himself, he was hacking into confidential sections of the Enterprise database. His intergalactic terrorist syndicate demanded up to date information about their targets, and it was his job to acquire this kind of data for his superiors.

Petrescu was one of many agents sent to hide among the crew of numerous starships, collect the data gathered by those ships, then destroy the crew once the task was done. He was a slippery one, having manipulated the systems of one of his old target ships to self-destruct, disguising himself as an engineer to do repair on the outer disc and deliberately entering the atmosphere of the planet below before it exploded. The destruction was spectacular, seen from miles above the exosphere.

He always posed as someone on his target ships. He had been an engineer, a communications officer, a medical student but on the Enterprise he was posing as a security officer. Speaking of the Enterprise, it was proving to be more troublesome than his past missions. The crew caught him in the act of duplicating other Starfleet ship coordinates onto a data drive which he thought was encrypted well enough. The system locked him out and Kirk threw him into the brig. Now there he was, fuming at himself. Petrescu knew his punishment could be severe, but even now he was scheming about a way out.

Before he was captured, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a number of other officers including Petrescu had beamed down to visit the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se as the first of their destinations. It was a gigantic city, surrounded by a ridiculously high wall of pure stone. The houses and buildings were all tan wood and white washed brick in the style of Oriental pagodas with roof tiles colored brown or green.

" This remind ya of something?" McCoy had asked the captain, looking around at the strangely familiar houses. And he was right. The earth benders wrote using what resembled Chinese characters. People were all wearing green, white, and black tunics lined with gold thread. The city was bustling, noisy, immensely overpopulated. But Ba Sing Se was just one city. The North Pole and South Poles had brought more surprises, the Air temples still held valuable information though in a dilapidated state, and the Fire Nation capital struck a certain chord of unease in everyone. Except Petrescu of course, who relished in watching things burn.

Petrescu felt this planet was repeating Earth as he observed the locals on his away missions. But the one major difference was, many of these planet's citizens could manipulate certain forces of nature. Supposedly one could manipulate all four, but manipulating one at all for a being genetically identical to humans was unheard of. Was it heightened brain power? Something spiritual? But no, there was no such thing as "spirits".

The Four Nations were undergoing a time of immense change. The Fire Nation in their relentless goal to expand had already destroyed the air benders and were on their way to dealing with the water benders next. Rumors were going around that the Avatar (an individual who could manipulate all four elements) had returned. He was an air bender child, and he was constantly traveling. In fact, he was the _last _airbender. The crew of the Enterprise took a stance of non-interference. Prophecy had it that the Avatar would restore balance to the world, and at a time like this, extra-terrestrials visiting wouldn't bode well for an already fragile political situation.

Petrescu stopped his mind from wandering. He had noticed something strange ever since he got in the brig. He kept shocking himself whenever he touched the edge of his bed, which was made of steel.

He rubbed his fingers slowly together now. He never felt so energized before, but he had no idea where this energy came from. All he knew was that he was now going to face the courts of the Federation for attempted hijacking of a starship and for espionage. Once they find out about his past exploits things may get infinitely worse. Unconsciously, he brought down his shaking hand hard onto the edge of the bed.

**_ZAP!_**

A bolt of electricity ran up his fingertips, arched out, and hit the force field. The field sizzled and blanked in places.

A triumphant smile flashed over Petrescu's face.

He went up to the force field, clenching his hands which were beginning to spark wildly.


	2. Crew in Chaos

**_PART II_**

" This world is undergoing a radical stage of development." Spock said. He switched through various pages in his data pad of information gleaned from the "Four Nations Planet".

McCoy read the data pad over Spock's shoulder. " No kidding, it's like China, Japan, and Mongolia taking over a whole planet and they're all into Oriental spiritualism!" the doctor snapped, " _Plus _the people can control forces of nature even though they're genetically identical to us."

" Well have you considered that it _may_ be something… spiritual?" Kirk asked. He swiveled around to glance at his old friend. Everyone knew it was another one of those clever comments made to annoy the doctor, but McCoy himself never seemed to get the point.

" Spiritual? Don't tell me those water benders from the North Pole got to your head!" McCoy scoffed.

" Spirituality is science that we do not yet understand." Spock countered, without looking up, "There may be an explanation for their gifts which do not have a basis in their genetics, but rather in the planet's atmospheric composition. The planet's atmosphere _does_ seem to have some strange readings in places like the North Pole, the Swamps, the air temples, even a part of the Earth Kingdom's largest desert-"

"The atmosphere everywhere else is identical to Earth though. And people can control elements all across the planet." Sulu said.

" But what if there are spirits? I mean, energy beings that they worship." Checkov suggested cheerily. The excited note in his voice made every one else on the bridge look up. Noticing that he was the center of attention, he elaborated, " The inhabitants worship the spirits which supposedly gave them these powers."

"Oh don't go there now-" McCoy began.

Uhura whirled around rapidly, " A message from engineering, captain." She said.

" Let's hear it."

A voice blasted from Uhura's station, desperate and frightened, " Captain! The terrorist has escaped! He's- shootin' lightning bolts! The guards are down! He's making towards the turbolift!"

Kirk's eyes flashed in surprise, " How did he get out of there?" he asked.

" His hands started giving off electricity when he got near the force field sir. _Then_ he simply walked through the field-"

" Walked through the-? " McCoy guffawed. He and the rest of the crew (minus Spock) exchanged " Oh-shoot-how-the-hell" glances.

" There is an explanation, Captain." Spock said, " If he can create an electrical frequency parallel to the fields he can override the barrier. And lightning benders can manipulate their frequencies so."

"If he can manipulate frequencies at will then all he needs is electricity in his vicinity to destroy things, dammit!" McCoy cried.

" Aiii! But we're on a star ship!" Checkov squeeked, " We're surrounded by-"

Kirk didn't want Checkov to finish that statement. " Station half the security teams at each civilian quarter and take the other half to stop him!" Kirk snapped into the speaker, " Corner him, stun him, then lock him nowhere near a force field until we can chart a course to a star base."

There was a scream and a fizz of static.

Kirk jumped to his feet and pointed at Uhura, " Get me another line!" he ordered.

But the crew was silent. He soon realized why. The hand he had raised was on fire. It was a steady flame that engulfed his fingers out of thin air. He stared at it. Then whipped it back and forth. It kept burning, yet he didn't feel a thing.

Everyone watched, too stunned to speak.

But Bones can always talk when he's in shock, " Whoa, Jim, you're hand is on-"

" **FIRE**!" Kirk yelled. He jumped up and started violently batting his hand into the back of the chair. It would have been comical if his fiery, jumping form didn't convey so much immediate danger.

McCoy bolted for the fire extinguisher but a full second before him, Spock had uncapped his water bottle. Using an instinct Spock was unaware he possessed, he slashed his hand in the air and the water from the bottle shot out in a jagged arc that thoroughly doused the captain. Kirk stumbled backwards and a blast of fire escaped his arm and slammed into Uhura's chair. She yelped and stumbled out of her seat. Checkov saw she was going to fall face first and instinctively went to stop her from falling. An invisible current ricocheted from his fingers and Uhura was blasted back upright while he was in mid-dash. She suddenly went ninja at that moment as well. Seeing her chair in such a scorched condition she used the exact same move as Spock had earlier. Water shot from off the floor and slammed into her chair, putting out the fire.

Checkov wasn't sure what to be more surprised of, the communications officer waterbending or _himself_ airbending. Before he could set it straight in his head, he was blasted into the wall by a gale.

" Pavel, I'm so sorry!" came Sulu's voice. The other guy had been trying to blast Kirk away from the consoles so the captain wouldn't light them on fire.

" Outta the way!" McCoy roared, then unleashed the fury of his fire extinguisher on Kirk. Kirk tripped on the slippery platform and fell back into his captain's chair.

" Doctor!" Spock cried. Didn't McCoy realize he was going to knock out the captain blasting him with water at that proximity? Illogical humans. The Vulcan lunged forward and performed a rapid pulling motion with his arms. The water came away from the captain and formed two levitating clusters around his hands.

" **He's still burning you idiot**!" McCoy yelled. He backed away, whole body stiff and even more rigid than Spock's. The extinguisher collapsed in on itself like a ball of crumpled paper and levitated above the ground an inch from McCoy's curling fist.

Spock couldn't help raising an eyebrow. McCoy was holding the metal without actually touching it.

Spock and McCoy eyed each other, one reasonably and the other half-crazed. A drenched and choking Kirk was slumped in the captain's seat. The good news was, his flames had died out after both of their saves.

" Doctor…" Spock said slowly, eyeing the crumpled metal under McCoy's fist, " You are _metalbending_." It served as both a question and a statement.

" Metalbending? Metalbending WHAT?" McCoy threw up his hands and the crumpled fire extinguisher slammed into the ceiling. It left an obvious dent before crashing back to the ground. Disbelief was etched in every line of McCoy's face.

" Fascinating. You were performing a specialized technique within earthbending. Only one earthbender on the planet below possesses it… besides you." Spock said matter-of-factly.

McCoy's mouth moved but no sound came out of it.

Kirk smiled weakly. If the situation wasn't so dire he might have even laughed. McCoy scowled. His hair all messed up, blue eyes wide and defensive. He kicked the fire extinguisher and cursed as pain shot up his leg, " Ow, goddammit!"

" We saved our captain from being toast! Air-five!" Sulu said jokingly to Checkov,"But don't air-five me into the ground."

There was a frantic buzzing sound from Uhura's station. She opened the transmission.

It was Scotty, freaking out in engineering.

" Captain! I think there's a stowaway on the ship! A Lightning bender!" came the Scotsman's voice, " He's trying to get into engineering! We can't keep him out for long and if he gets in here I don't know how we can keep this ship running!"

" We'll be right there! And it isn't a stowaway, it's the terrorist."

" _Wait,_ what?! He's bloody lightning bending now? How in the bloody universe-!"

There was another burst of static, Uhura fiddled with the instruments at her station but shook her head.

" I've lost him, our connection with engineering is severed." She said.

That was it for Kirk.

" I'm going in." he remarked, standing.

" Captain, you do not have full control of your powers yet. I _strongly _advise against this." Spock replied.

" Don't be crazy, Jim!" McCoy injected furiously (at least this was something he and the Vulcan agreed on) " We have no idea what these bending abilities are doing to us. We may not feel anything now but you can be damn well sure it'll have side effects!"

" There are injured civilians, Bones. You're needed in sickbay." Kirk replied, " And I got the hang of the firebending." With that, he waved a hand and a long red tendril of flame stretched from it and dissipated on the air. He clenched his hand into a fist and all the fire was choked out.

McCoy didn't react to the display, only the words which preceded it, " Excuse me, but if you're throwing yourself into an all-out _attack_ you're gonna get _hurt! _I'm coming with you!"

" I understand, Bones, but sickbay will be in disarray right now. You've gotta see to it that the passengers aren't hurt." Kirk said. The seriousness in his eyes reached every other pair in the room.

" We're coming." Sulu snapped. Checkov and Uhura nodded.

Spock dreaded having the abilities. He recalled McCoy's instinctive metalbending. The doctor had no idea how difficult the skill was. Only one earth bender was ever known to metal bend, and that was Toph Beifong who possessed seismic sense. If McCoy hadn't paused to think he could have caused serious damage. No one knew how to use their powers here. And Spock admitted he didn't know nearly enough about his water bending to engage in combat using it.


End file.
